Terps hope to not repeat same mistakes against Northern Iowa

Guard Dez Wells goes airborne for a layup during the Terps’ 78-77 loss to No. 18 UConn at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Nov. 8, 2013.

ST. THOMAS, Virgin Islands — As the Terrapins men’s basketball team sat in the back corner of the gym at the University of the Virgin Islands on Friday afternoon sporting matching red and white shooting shirts, it watched something that probably looked rather familiar.

Northern Iowa was in the process of cruising to a 90-81 win over Loyola Marymount in the opening round of the Paradise Jam. The Panthers shot 51 percent from the field — 57.1 percent from three-point range — in the process, and Loyola Marymount was unable to get a defensive stop late in the game to spark a comeback.

It was a performance that resembled the Terps’ 90-83 loss to Oregon State five days earlier, in which the Beavers shot 59.6 percent from the field.

So after the Terps dismantled a winless Marist team, 68-43, on Friday in the game after Northern Iowa’s win, coach Mark Turgeon’s mind quickly turned to the Panthers, who they’ll play Sunday night in the Paradise Jam semifinals.

Turgeon doesn’t want to relive his team’s poor defensive effort against Oregon State, and Northern Iowa proved that it has the explosiveness to post the same kind of numbers the Beavers did.

“They are going to be a lot harder to guard than the team we guarded tonight,” Turgeon said after beating the Red Foxes on Friday. “We’ll have to use our length and be smarter.”

The Terps did make some improvements to their defense after the listless performance against Oregon State. Turgeon lauded Nick Faust for perimeter defense in the victory over Marist and mentioned that by using a deeper bench, the Terps saw improved effort.

As a result, the Terps outscored the Red Foxes 42-23 in the second half on Friday and ran away with a win.

“It really just started with our defense,” guard Varun Ram said.

But the Panthers present an entirely different challenge as they showed in their victory over Loyola Marymount, when three different players scored at least 20 points.

Guard Deon Mitchell directed the Panthers attack, finishing with 23 points and five assists, while guard Matt Bohannon shot 5-of-7 from three-point range and added 22 points. Forward Seth Tuttle chipped in 21 points and 11 rebounds for Northern Iowa.

“They are obviously very well coached,” Turgeon said. “They have a lot of shooters, they have got a good big man in Tuttle and they have two little guards that can break you down off the dribble.”

Turgeon has some familiarity with the Panthers as he coached against them in the Missouri Valley conference from 2000 to 2007 while he headed Wichita State. Northern Iowa coach Ben Jacobson spent his first year with the Panthers in Turgeon’s final season coaching the Shockers.

Though the Terps’ third-year coach has competed against Northern Iowa and Jacobson, he doesn’t think that will come into play. The Panthers have much different personnel now, and besides, Turgeon wants his Terps team to maintain its improved defense without focusing on an opponent.

“I’m sure they got like 60 sets they run, but we won’t concern ourselves with that,” Tuergon said. “Our fundamentals have to take over.”

The Terps looked sound defensively against a struggling Marist team. The impressive defensive effort — the Red Foxes shot just 26 percent from the field — came after the Terps spent the past week addressing the struggles they experienced against Oregon State.

“Coach held a film session for us the day after,” forward Jake Layman said. “He went over all our mistakes and it was really bad. And we said to ourselves, ‘We don’t want to have that again.’”

The Terps avoided a defensive breakdown against Marist, but they want their success to persist.

So after a snorkeling trip Saturday, the Terps will refocus to play Northern Iowa on Sunday night. They’ll think back to what they saw while on the bleachers two days earlier and they’ll try to stop what Loyola Marymount couldn’t.

“If we play well, it should be a great game,” Turgeon said. “We’re going to have to make a few jump shots, they are going to sag it in, and hopefully in the end our size will help us with offensive rebounding, defensive rebounding. But in the end, it should be a great game.”